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The real cost of TABOR

I have been following the recent grappling in the Colorado legislature about the least awful remedy for the state budget crisis with both concern and puzzlement.

Concern because of the precipitous "budget cliff" that higher education in the state is rapidly approaching, and puzzlement because I don't see either party addressing or even mentioning the obvious cause of the crisis: TABOR legislation.

At least I am not alone in my distress over this issue - an independent-minded lawyer and concerned citizen, Herb Fenster, also realizes what a fiscally irresponsible and short-sighted political gimmick TABOR really is.

My angle on the higher education funding issue is personal and quite narrow: I believe that we are losing talented educators in Colorado because we don't spend enough to fund full-time instructor and professor positions. Instead, public institutions are forced to rely on grossly overworked and underpaid adjunct instructors who must teach 5 or even 6 classes a semester, spread out among 2 or 3 institutions, just to make a paltry living.

I returned to Colorado in 2005 from a Fulbright lectureship abroad with 10 years of experience teaching college English, literature, and writing, having been a full-time faculty member at 2 highly regarded institutions outside of the state.

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I expected that I would find a teaching position somewhere — teaching composition at a community college, at the very least. What I found was all the adjunct work I could ever want: I had calls from 3 or 4 institutions offering me classes within a few days of sending out my resume.

However, when I inquired about full-time work, every department head I talked to told me the same thing: full-time positions for English faculty basically didn't exist. Most community college departments consisted of a single faculty member: a full-time department head who spent most of his or her time hiring adjuncts to cover class offerings. I also discovered that Colorado ranks 48th or 49th in the country on per pupil spending for higher education.

For me, the clincher was the ugly bottom line: the pay per class for an adjunct in Colorado in 2005 was less than what I received in 1998 as an adjunct in Louisiana, one of the poorest states in the country.

And not just a little less: I was offered roughly $1,600 per class (with no benefits) to adjunct at Arapahoe Community College in 2005, while I made $2,750 per class at the University of New Orleans seven years earlier - the per class equivalent of a full-time faculty member's salary (again, without benefits). In addition, since adjuncts are usually limited to teaching 3 courses at any institution, I would have to drive across town to at least one other institution in order to scrape together enough money to live.

Even if an adjunct professor makes $1,600 per course a semester, at 4 courses a semester, twice a year - a normal to high course load at any university - they are making $12,800 per year. That is not a living wage for a graduate educated professional (or anyone else) in Colorado, especially when one factors in the cost of health insurance and repayment of student loans.

After doing the math, I left academia (which I loved) and got a job at an internet company. I am quite sure I am not the only qualified person who has fled from a career in higher education in Colorado because it simply is not financially viable.

This trend is ominous, and it has serious consequences for our economic future as well as our competitiveness and prestige as a state.

I know that finding funding for higher education in Colorado is not easy right now, to say the least. But this issue needs to be presented to Coloradoans as the crisis it truly is - a major threat to our competitiveness, economic growth, and quality of life.

Colorado should not be ranked 48th or 49th in anything, considering the comparative wealth and sophistication of our citizens. Democrats — or somebody — must take the battle to the Republicans, and attack what really got the state into this fiscal mess: TABOR legislation and the irresponsible politicking behind it.

Michael Mahoney is a writer and former educator. He lives in Denver with his wife, an adjunct instructor. EDITOR'S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.

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